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That's not what *I* see it as, which is maybe why we have a disconnect.

If you walk for the united way, and get pledges towards your miles walked or completing a walk, who is getting anything from that? What's the incentive?

...

That was my thought behind the idea.

It also provides a sense of shared purpose and community for people with a high personal need for affiliation.

Not necessarily a bad thing. But many times it engenders a false sense of "doing" that takes on a life of it's own if you're not careful.

In a city near where I live, there's this big drive to get all the kids under the age of ten photographed annually.

This is for identification purposes in the event one ever got kidnapped. They don't have many kids go missing there. And kidnapping has never been a common crime there either. But it's a hot button topic that caught the imagination of enough people that a non-profit got formed to make the "ID Your Child" thing happen.

They solicit contributions to help keep the service cost down for everybody, and to provide ID photos for people who can't afford it.

But here's the problem. You can't just make a contribution to them. You have to "sponsor" one of their activity participants. When asked, I told them I wasn't interested in supporting their "walk" but that I'd be happy to contribute $20 to their cause. They refused it. I was told you had to sponsor a walker or they couldn't take the contribution.

Apparently, this walk was a big deal thing for them. So much so that they turned down a cash contribution to their cause because I didn't want to be "incentivized" to make it.

So tell me which was more important: making sure there were current ID photographs of the little kids on file in case (god forbid!) the police ever needed them - or - making sure everybody who donated was on the same page for how contributions should be solicited.

Like I said, these things sometimes take on a life of their own and get in the way of accomplishing the intended goal.

P.S. Ran into the same thing recently with a charitable group that was out selling raffle tickets. If you wouldn't take a ticket, they wouldn't take your money.

I didnt say it initially (cause it may reflect poorly on me...) but it made me think - oh, I will upload new credits if I have the chance of winning that!(I have credits I could donate to the site, but I believe only 'new' credits count for the fundraiser and the draw)

As someone who donated in the last two fundraising events ($20 and $15 under a different username) my point is:

If you paid donations, then why hide behind sockpuppet ? I mean there is no need to have sockpuppet to voice your genuine query. Unless ofcourse you have some no good intentions for starting some mess. It socks to see sockpuppet ya know.

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Where did all the money go to?

Do checkout hosting fees of softlayer dedicated servers for 2 years. Do get info from mouser about two servers that DC owns and the size of dedicated servers( space and bandwidth). Once you get all this info then come and rant the same negative tune in two different threads.

Just a quick note: The day we moved from a VPS to a dedicated server was one of the best days in the life of this site.

On a VPS you are sharing a server with other sites and have no control over what they are doing -- leading to huge swings in responsiveness of the server and contentions for resources, and no way to figure out why things are going wrong when they do and the site grinds to a halt.

Trying to host a site like DC on a VPS would be (and was) an exercise in frustration for everyone. Gothic, who does all the server administration for DC and has been a life saver could tell you more about the nightmares of trying to run a big site on a VPS.

One last thought -- I think it might be productive to have a thread on things we are doing poorly here on DC -- and ways we could improve. There is always room for that.

But if you think about it -- what are we asking people to do during the fundraiser? Donate whatever amount they want -- commensurate with the benefits they get from the site. It seems kind of hard to argue that we haven't done enough to warrant asking people to donate what they feel the site is worth to them..

ANYWAY,

let's get back to keeping this thread positive and on topic -- and i'll invite loutus to start a new thread for discussing constructive (hopefully!) criticism.

Mouser u know ur argument, while seemingly valid, is like saying Red Cross does not need to have accountability for the donations they receive -- because people are free to donate whatever amount they like, whatever they feel the org is worth to them.

I know that when the fund-raising event gets scheduled, it's done on time. And to hell with the roadmap, the planned stuff, the ideas, they all get sidetracked and mothballed until next time there's an event like the fundraiser and all these get brought up to the front all over again and then forgotten again.

If we were to bring back today someone who initially visited the site and participated on the forum back in 2009 when he donated during the fundraiser, will he be able to perceive any noticeable development to the site after two years of absence?

I'll bet he'll have a strong feeling of "isn't that the same old sh*?".